It is known that the conventional frozen meat is, compared with fresh meat, of lower quality because, upon freezing, the cell walls are destroyed by the crystallizing cell liquid. Upon thawing, the tissue water runs out which causes considerable losses in taste.
Because of this damaging of the tissue, it has, up to now, not been possible in medicine to use low-frozen organs or parts of organs, after their thawing, for transplantations, since the tissue is completely necrobiotic. On the other hand, there exists especially in the medical field a considerable necessity to conserve organs, which have been taken out for a longer period of time, in order to be able to carry out the transplantation, at the receiver, at an optimum point of time. The ability to have some storage life would, in any case, be of advantage.
For the transplantation of a kidney in the humane medicine of humans and animals, there are available today e.g. a maximum of about 24 hours, between the taking out and the transplanting, whereby the kidney is kept alive with the help of expensive processes. After the removal, there must be carried out, via donor blood and tissue samples, different compatibility tests, whose results determine if that kidney can be successfully transplanted and to what receiver type. This test result is communicated to a central registrator for potential receivers, when thereafter, a patient is found being of suitable type. After corresponding communication to the donor- and receiver clinic, the transplantate or organ is sent on the one side, and the preparation of the patient and of the operation on the other. When by these measures, the basic time being available, has passed, the kidney has to be rejected, notwithstanding of all trouble and costs that have ensued.
Therefore, it can already be considered a great advance that through Belzer's continuous perfusion process the maximum time, which is available for all above-mentioned preparations, has been extended from 6 hours to 24 hours. This process is based on a cooled, mechanical, pulsating permanent perfusion, with a special perfusion solution, whose manifold change and modification in the last years could, however, heretofore produce no considerable extension of the tolerance time.
If it would now become possible to prolong this short time of 24 hours considerably, there would not only be taken away the hecticness from all preparatory measures for the transplantation, but also a differentiated typisation process could be applied, whose use was impossible up to now, because it required or had a duration of one week. The psychic preparation of the receiver could be carried out more carefully and the actual operation accomplished utilizing current conventional processes. Moreover, no suitable organ would have to be rejected because, as now, there is not the right timing for finding a compatable receiver or, e.g., the receiver is not in sufficiently good health at the time to justify the risk of the operation.
The above considerations prove true not only for kidneys but also for other organs. Therefore, the degree of activity of the technique of the transplantation surgery could be increased decisively by extending the time of survival of the isolated organs or parts of organs. However, this extension of survival time is possible only by a complete or at least almost complete interruption of all metabolism proceedings in the transplantate itself. However, according to todays knowledge, the metabolic procedures could be stopped only at temperatures below -100.degree. C. However, at such a cooling, the tissue will be destroyed in all known processes, so that it will no longer be useful for a transplantation.
It would be a great step forward, not only in the medical field, but also in the field of the conservation of provisions, if it would become possible to conserve meat by the application of low temperatures so that after thawing such meat could practically not be differentiated from the fresh meat.